This poem started life and was based on The Rolling English Road by GK Chesterton, a great poem that I have always loved. Our ancestors trod many of these roads, particularly across what had previously been Mercia, Wessex and the middle of England.
But Came they All to Birmingham
Once the Romans got to Lye, and the Normans got to Stoke, the Chroniclers of England forgot the ordinary folk. The villagers who worked the land where oxon pulled the plough, who made the wheels and baked the bread, who tended to the sow.
Those who soldiered for the King or sailed the seven seas, without ever making Captain or a gentleman of ease. Instead they toiled through every day as long as they were able, to bring home the corn, to earn a crust, to put food upon the table.
The forgotten folk of England, without whose evolution there never would have been an Industrial Revolution. The cities that we know today formed when they bared their soul to leave their home, forsake the land, to laud the new god – coal.
To work each day at a machine or with a caster’s cowl, to live in streets of back-to-backs with neighbours cheek-to-jowl. To work at looms, to make gold rings, to fight a fire or two. But came they all to Birmingham, where they could start anew.
But Came They All to Birmingham 